If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, than special effects maven Alec Gillis’ writing/directorial debut, Harbinger Down (2015), just may go down as one of the sincerest films in recent memory. By taking a little Alien (1979), a little Blood Glacier (2013) and a whole lot of Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Gillis crafts another Arctic-set creature feature that stands tall thanks to its excellent effects work (both practical and CGI) but sinks a bit due to the overly familiar scenario, characters that rarely rise above the level of cinematic tropes and a tone that see-saws between atmospheric, portentous doom and bone-headed, B-movie actioneering.

After opening with a really dynamic bit involving a Russian spacecraft plummeting into the Arctic Circle in the early ’80s, Harbinger Down begins, proper, with an extremely tedious bit of stereotypical found-footage that momentarily gave me unease before it was abandoned for the more traditionally cinematic look that suits the material much better. We meet our erstwhile protagonist and college student, Sadie (Camille Balsamo), who has joined the crew of the crab boat Harbinger, along with classmate Ronelle (Giovonnie Samuels) and officious, shithead professor, Stephen (Matt Winston), in order to track and study a pod of Beluga whales.

The crew, as befits this type of film, is your usual Whitman’s sampler of stereotypes, cliches, tropes and characterizations: we get the gruff, tough-as-nails captain, who also happens to be Sadie’s beloved grandpa (Lance Henriksen, adding gravitas even if he seems largely disinterested); the noble, silent and superstitious local native (Edwin H. Bravo); the motor-mouthed, sarcastic and cynical wiseass (Michael Estime); the ridiculously tough Russian chick who expresses romantic interest in a guy by beating the crap out of him (Milla Bjorn); the enormous bruiser who’s revealed to be sweeter, smarter and nicer than he appears (Winston James Francis); the weird loner who works in the engine room and always seems filthy (Kraig W. Sturtz); and, of course, the obligatory blast-from-the-past/love interest (Reid Collums).

Once our merry misfits have all come together on the isolated, frigid and storm-tossed sea, the film wastes little time in setting up the main conflict. To whit: while whale watching, Sadie spies a mysterious, frozen mass and has the crew pluck it from the icy depths and deposit it upon the ship’s deck. Turns out the object is the Russian spacecraft from the beginning of the film, complete with long-dead cosmonaut still belted into the shuttle. Faster than you can say “Maybe you shouldn’t touch that,” they do, indeed, touch the rapidly thawing craft, releasing an icky pink substance from the dead spaceman that is explained away as “tardigrades,” yet really only needs one descriptor: “horrifying cosmic slop that eats organisms and causes violent mutation.”

From this point on, Harbinger Down hits all of the standard-issue creature feature tropes: the disparate group must band together, figure out what they’re faced with, figure out a way to destroy it and then pursue it (and be pursued by it, in turn) throughout the ship until we reach the appropriately effects-heavy final confrontation. Et voila: roll credits and wait for the inevitable sequel.

If this sounds rather similar to aforementioned films like Alien, Blood Glacier and The Thing, well, that’s because it is similar: very, very similar, to be frank. This isn’t, of course, automatically a crucial defect: many of the slashers that followed in Halloween’s original wake were highly derivative of Carpenter’s classic, yet still managed to bring something new (no matter how minuscule) to the table. There are only so many unique plots, after all: say “Arctic-set, sci-fi horror about mutations” and it’s all but impossible not to reference The Thing.

That being said, Gillis’ film often leans so heavily on what came before that it frequently loses its own sense of identity. By the time we get to the de rigueur “Are they or aren’t they infected?” scene, our minds have already filled in all the blanks from previous, similar films, giving much of Harbinger Down a “been there, done that” feel.

Despite the over familiarity, however, Gillis and cinematographer Benjamin L. Brown still manage to imbue the film with an oppressive, overbearing atmosphere: the various shots of the lonely Harbinger, a tiny island of light in the unbelievably immense vastness of the Arctic Ocean, are extremely powerful and handily set up the disparity between the tiny bit that humans know and the countless mysteries that we know nothing about whatsoever. As mentioned earlier, the creature effects are also top-notch, creating intensely odd, misshapen monstrosities that recall both The Thing and Blood Glacier without being overly slavish to either: there’s something determinedly alien and otherworldly about the mutations, an alien quality which goes a long way in selling the film’s horror.

A pity, then, that the chilling atmosphere is so often broken up by silly shenanigans like the scene where Big G and Rick try to fool Stephen, Big G and Svetlana’s dumb courtship/brawl or the intensely over-the-top bit where Sadie talks shit to the Russian crew: moments like these take us right out of the action and put our focus squarely on the characters which, as stated previously, often act as the loosest-possible plotline placeholders. These, unfortunately, are the moments that separate Harbinger Down from the truly classic creature features of the past several decades: attempts at creating “ass-kicking” action and suspense that serve only to unnecessarily dilute the film’s actual tension and horrific potential.

Despite how familiar it ended up being, however, I still thoroughly enjoyed Harbinger Down. Call me a sucker for this type of film but, like dystopic sci-fi or pretty much any underwater horror, I’ll watch just about any arctic-set horror that’s set before me. With a decent cast, great locations, a solid (if familiar) story and some top-notch effects, there’s a whole lot to like about Gillis’ Harbinger Down. If nothing else, the film stands as a good indication that the effects guru-turned filmmaker has a good head on his shoulders and firmly understands the mechanics behind B-grade monster movies and their ilk. As long as he keeps crafting solid, well-made films like this one, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for his next project.

Grains of sand are curious things: if you have one, you really don’t have much of anything…if you have a couple trillion, you have a beach. This is, of course, all by way of saying that the scattered grains of sand that were my pending film reviews have quickly grown to something that more closely resembles a dune. Since it will still be some time before I can completely catch up, I figured I’d do the next best thing and write up some mini-reviews in the meantime, lest I quickly find myself buried beneath a solid month’s worth of films.

To that end, I now present a few thoughts about the films I screened during the first week of this year’s 31 Days of Halloween (10/1-10/4). Since one of the main purposes of this humble little blog is to turn folks on to new films, I wanted to make sure to get some recommendations out there while folks can still program a little Halloween goodness of their own. With no further ado, then..

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Thursday, 10/1

The Nightmare — This fascinating little documentary about the frightening phenomenon of sleep paralysis comes to us from the filmmakers behind the recent Shining/conspiracy theory doc, Room 237. Through a mixture of interviews and re-enactments, we get a front-row seat to a genuinely disturbing, almost impossible strange malady that might affect more people than you at first realize.

Dark Was the Night — Coming across as a sturdy combination of Feast and 30 Days of Night, DWtN is a thoroughly competent “monster invades a small town” flick that features strong performances from Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas and Nick Damici (one of my all-time favorites) and a suitably bleak resolution.

The Blood Lands — Starting strong before gradually losing its way, The Blood Lands (formerly known by the much more incendiary but pointless title White Settlers) ended up on my shit-list by taking one of the best genre actresses in the business, Pollyana McIntosh, and saddling her with a simpering ninny of a character. Imagine if Lt. Ripley took one look at the Queen Xenomorph and decided to let the boys handle it, instead: yeah, I didn’t buy it, either. McIntosh’s glorious “The Woman” character would take one look at The Blood Lands’ Sarah and knock her straight into next week.

They — Despite some effective (if minor) chills, Robert Harmon’s They is just about as beige and generic as its title would indicate. While this tale about now-grown friends confronting (literally) the demons of their childhood makes some minor nods to classic “confronting-the-past” horrors like It, it really plays out as more of a watered-down version of the already tepid Under the Bed. Even Ethan Embry can’t make this particularly interesting: make of that what you will.

Friday, 10/2

The Houses October Built — This modest little found-footage flick about friends looking for the ultimate haunted house experience (as in “professional haunts with people in masks,” not “actually haunted houses,” which is an important distinction) genuinely surprised me: gritty, unnerving, fairly realistic and genuinely creepy, there’s a whole lot to like here. The “villains” are all quite memorable (scary clowns never get old, for one thing) and the film never quite devolves into “torture porn” territory, even though it toes the line. Pretty much the definition of a sleeper.

Saturday, 10/3

The American Scream — A charming, thoroughly winning documentary about three families in a small American town who go all out for Halloween, turning their respective homes into some of the most impressive, cool amateur haunted houses that I’ve ever seen. Growing up, we always turned our home and garage into elaborate haunts every year, so The American Scream ended up being the best kind of nostalgia for me.

Saw — Despite some truly terrible performances (Leigh Whannell, in particular, is astoundingly bad and poor Danny Glover isn’t much better) and a really ugly look, there’s something inherently feral about James Wan’s surprise hit debut. More of a mystery, ala Se7en, than the latter entries in the series, Saw features some great twists (I’ll forget the audience reaction to the final revelation when I watched this on opening night) and introduced the sense of moral relativism to torture porn that it so desperately needed (and still needs, to be honest). It’ll never end up on any “Best of…” lists but it’s also not the worst thing out there.

Monsters — I was never a huge fan of this film when I first saw it, although my opinion has softened a bit in the ensuing years. In a nutshell, Monsters is sort of a mumblecore creature feature: we follow our hesitant “will they?/won’t they?” potential romantic couple as they attempt to make their way from monster-infested South America into the relative safety of the United States. Just as much an immigration/border parable as a monster movie, Monsters keeps its creatures firmly in the background, allowing the humans to take the stage. Think of this as the “anti-Pacific Rim,” if you will.

Saw II — Continuing to expand on the original film’s “mythos,” the first sequel introduces Donnie Wahlberg and puts more of an emphasis on the traps. It’s a solid step-down from the first film, mostly due to writer/director Darren Lynn Bousman’s obnoxious stylistic quirks and some of the most unpleasant characters to grace the screen in some time. No wonder audiences rooted for Jigsaw: if it was up to me, I woulda nuked ’em all and been done with it.

Monsters: Dark Continent — A fairly massive disappointment, this belated follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ effective original is really just another film about U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. It’s telling when the filmmakers opt to make local insurgents the real threat over the massive monsters that blithely roam around the Iraqi desert. We get it, guys: this isn’t “just” another monster movie….it’s about “bigger things.” They’re right: it’s not just another monster movie…it’s actually another dull, generic and clichéd war film. Huzzah!

Saw III — Part from the first film, the third in the series is, hands-down, my favorite. The twisting machinations of Jigsaw’s convoluted plan are suitably gripping but it’s the downright nefarious traps that really get the blood pumping. There’s an honest-to-god story arc here about a father trying to get over the hit-and-run death of his young child and it really works. Plus, ya know, that bit with the liquified pig carcasses is pretty impossible to forget.

Saw IV — More convoluted than the previous entry and decidedly less fun, the fourth entry in the series isn’t terrible (that would be the second and fifth) but it is pretty forgettable. This fully introduces Costas Mandylor’s Hoffman character and starts the series down the winding, twisting path that ultimately leads to its resolution. More than anything, though, it’s the fourth entry in a multiplex horror series: innovative, it is not.

Sunday, 10/4

Cooties — Thus far, this gleefully misanthropic horror-comedy is not only my favorite film of October but one of my favorite films of the entire year (and then some). The concept is unbeatable (chicken nuggets turn pre-pubescent kids into ravenous flesh-eaters and it’s up to a motley group of grade school teachers to save the day), the cast is amazing (Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad and the single best performance by actor/writer Leigh Whannell that he’s ever done) and the whole thing expertly toes the line between laugh-out-loud funny and edge-of-your-seat tense. I instantly loved this as much as Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and I definitely don’t say that lightly.

The Boy — The polar-opposite of Cooties, Craig William Macneill’s The Boy is a stunning examination of a burgeoning serial killer’s first, tentative, boyhood steps towards ultimate evil. Nothing about the film is pleasant in any conventional way but, like the iconic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I dare you to tear your eyes from the screen. David Morse and Rainn Wilson are fabulous playing against their usual types but it’s young Jared Breeze (who’s also in Cooties, ironically) who will stomp your heart into a mud-hole. This is the kind of film that everyone should see, especially as terrible acts of random violence continue to plague our world.

Deathgasm — Heavy metal and horror go together like beer and Slayer shows: you can have either/or but it’s always the best when they’re paired up. Screaming out of New Zealand, writer/director Jason Lei Howden’s full-length-debut is hilarious, heart-felt and full of more fist-raising set-pieces than you can shake a Flying V at. Sort of like the tragically under-rated Canadian TV marvel Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, Deathgasm doesn’t take any cheap shots at his corpse-paint-bedecked heroes: the “beautiful” people are the fodder and it’s up to the outcasts to save the day. Extra points for Kimberley Crossman’s frankly adorable transformation from stereotypical blonde princess to ridiculously epic ass-kicker: she needs her own stand-alone movie, stat.

Hellions — I absolutely loved Canadian wunderkind Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool (easily one of the best, most ingenious and freshest zombie film to come out in a good 15 years), so my anticipation was through the roof for Hellions: after all, how could a film about a pregnant teenager making a desperate Halloween-eve stand against demonic trick or treaters fail? Turns out, it’s not quite as difficult as I imagined. While Hellions is far from a terrible film (the film’s pink-tinted look, alone, makes it one of the most visually interesting films I’ve ever seen, assorted creepy, hallucinatory images notwithstanding), it is a terribly confusing, cluttered and rather haphazard one. Similar to Rob Zombie’s Fulci homage The Lords of Salem, Hellions emphasizes odd, evocative visuals and dreamy, nightmare scenarios over any kind of narrative cohesion. I didn’t hate Hellions, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s no denying it’s an odd, often off-putting film.

Turbo Kid — My level of anticipation for this throwback to the VHS ’80s was so high that it’s probably inevitable I would be disappointed. Don’t get me wrong: there’s an awful lot to like here and even quite a few things to love. The synthy score is spot-on, the over-the-top violence comes close to Jason Eisener’s ridiculously radical Hobo With a Shotgun and the sense of world building (albeit on an extreme budget) is admirable. For all that, however, the film never fully connected with me. Perhaps it was the awkward love story (Laurence Leboeuf’s performance as Apple is so unrelentingly weird and strange that I was genuinely baffled as to what Munro Chambers’ Kid saw in her), the too-often self-conscious acting or the overall scattershot feel. Whatever the reason, I went into this expecting Turbo Kid to be my new favorite film and came out extolling the virtues of Hobo With a Shotgun, instead. Gotta love Skeletron, though!

Several years ago, a horror film emerged from the ether (so to speak) and gave me a righteous thumping upside my head: the film was Stitches (2012), the filmmaker was an Irish writer/director/editor named Conor McMahon and it became, hands down, one of my favorite films of the entire year. By turns horrifying, hilarious and almost ludicrously splatterific, Stitches was a glorious return to the good old days of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and introduced the world to one of the greatest, new horror icons of the 2000s: Stitches, the homicidal, undead clown. Death by ice cream cone? Two scoops, please!

After a few years of silence, McMahon’s newest opus, From the Dark (2014), has been unleashed upon a largely unsuspecting populace. As someone who not only liked but positively loved McMahon’s previous film, I found myself greedily seeking more of the same: after all, horror-comedy is never an easy sub-genre to pull off but the writer-director made it seem so easy-breezy the first time around, who can fault me for pulling an Oliver Twist? Proving he’s anything but a one-trick pony, however, McMahon’s newest film is the furthest thing from his previous one: From the Dark is an ultra-serious, low-budget and very modest production (the entire cast appears to consist of four actors, including the costumed creature) that involves a bickering couple stumbling upon ancient evil in the picturesque Irish countryside. While the film never approaches the sublime heights of Stitches, it handily showcases another side of an extremely exciting new(ish) filmmaker and points the way towards an interesting future.

Sarah (Niamh Algar) and Mark (Stephen Cromwell) are a young couple who set off for a romantic getaway but end up running into the usual raft of horror movie problems: their car gets stuck in the mud, in the middle of nowhere, and Mark is forced to set off and find help, as Sarah waits with the vehicle. Characterization is light but we get a few basics: the couple aren’t married, yet, although Mark’s dim view of the institution of wedlock doesn’t bespeak of a particularly rosy future. They bicker a little, although we can tell there’s a lot of love here. We also get the notion that Sarah is the stronger of the two, both mentally and emotionally: again, never bad qualities to have in a horror movie heroine.

Mark ends up stumbling upon a seemingly deserted farmhouse, although an intriguing opening scene has already set the scene for this, as well: our first image is of a grizzled old farmer digging up some sort of “body” in a peat bog, a body which seems to move of its own volition after the farmer leaves. We witness “something” attack and drag the farmer into a nearby pond, which makes Mark’s discovery of him standing in the dark farmhouse, zombie-like, somewhat disconcerting. After bringing Sarah back to the farmhouse, in order to help the seemingly wounded farmer, he suddenly turns on the couple, attacking viciously.

To make matters worse, the “thing” that the farmer initially dug up is roaming around the countryside, looking like a rather terrifying combination of the troglodytes in The Descent (2005), James Sizemore’s creations in The Demon’s Rook (2013) and Max Schreck’s take on Nosferatu. It’s big, monstrous, vaguely humanoid and seems to be very hungry (or angry…it’s a little hard to tell). There is a bright spot, however (quite literally): the creature can’t stand light, similar to the monsters in David Twohy’s under-rated Pitch Black (2000). Thus, Sarah and Mark retreat to the “safety” of the farmhouse and make a desperate stand, utilizing flashlights, lamps, candelabrum, makeshift torches and anything else they can get their hands on. If they can only make it to the morning, perhaps the healing, warm rays of the sun will wash away the evil. It’s going to be a long, dark night, however…a very long one, indeed.

Were I not such a huge fan of McMahon’s previous film, From the Dark would, most likely, have hit me a lot harder than it did: as it stands, however, I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed, even though there’s nothing particularly wrong with the finished product. It is a bit familiar, true: if I’ve seen one recent indie horror about a couple stranded out in the wilderness, I’ve probably seen at least five (to be fair, maybe four). It’s not like McMahon and crew drop the ball on this facet of the film: despite the familiarity, Algar and Cromwell are a likable enough pair and everything moves forward at a fairly fast clip. The cinematography, courtesy of Michael Lavelle, is plenty evocative and atmospheric, even if the occasional camera shake feels woefully out-of-place. The creature looks great from farther away and pretty good from up close (the closer we get, the more it looks like one of the aforementioned Descent critters) and there’s a really intuitive use of light and shadow to help build suspense and tension, both of which also tie into the basic mechanics of the film.

Pretty much everything is in place, yet From the Dark still feels a touch under-cooked, just a shade less developed than it needs to be. For one thing, there’s absolutely no mythos attached to the monster whatsoever: while I found the recent Horsehead (2014) to be cagier than necessary with its titular creature, From the Dark vaults straight past “mysterious” right into “unnecessarily vague.” The creature acts and looks sort of vampiric (the Nosferatu nod, being buried with a stake in its chest), infects people like a zombie, has night-vision (hence the light resistance, I’m assuming), has human-like hands and feet and, at times, seems to be able to fly around (or, at the least, run really quickly and silently). I definitely didn’t need an awkward exposition scene where an old townie holds a flashlight under his chin and tells us a ghost story but I also needed more than what we’re given. As it stands, we don’t even get the vague insinuations of age-old mutations hinted at in The Descent: we pretty much get a monster, which chases our protagonists around for a while.

This sense of vagueness also points towards another major difference between From the Dark and its predecessor: From the Dark is a markedly less clever, inventive film than Stitches. While this might have a little to do with the differences in tone (Stitches, after all, was an extremely dark comedy featuring a motor-mouthed comic in the lead sociopath role), some of the cleverest, most outrageous aspects of Stitches were the incredibly inventive death setpieces, not the hilarious dialogue. In these moments, Stitches was not only one of the smartest, wackiest modern films, it was one of the smartest to come down the pike since the glory days of the ’80s.

As compared to Stitches, From the Dark is as bare-bones, meat-and-potatoes as it gets. The only setpiece in the film that really stands out (aside from the beautifully Gothic final confrontation) is the one where Sarah maneuvers from the upstairs of the farmhouse to the ground floor, moving a lamp, as necessary, to provide meager protection from the rampaging creature. It’s a gloriously tense scene, exquisitely blocked and genuinely thrilling: too bad that so many other scenes devolve into your basic “run and get chased” formula. Stitches was a film where you never had any sense of what’s coming next: from clown sex to death by ice cream scooper, McMahon seemed to pull twists and outrage seemingly out of thin air. Here, McMahon seems to be following a pre-established recipe, giving us all of the required beats and moments for this type of thing but with a decided lack of “seasoning”: even the creature’s aversion to light hearkens back to Pitch Black, which managed to make much better use of that particular “gimmick.”

Despite my disappointment, however, I still enjoyed From the Dark. While Stephen Cromwell’s Mark got a little tedious and whiny by the film’s conclusion, Niamh Algar’s Sarah was always a sturdy protagonist and a more than suitable “final girl” to move the proceedings into their logical conclusion. In fact, I was so impressed with her organic progression from “scared” to “ass-kicking” that I’m going to make a point to follow her more in the future: I’m hoping that more filmmakers take McMahon’s lead and start making Algar the focus of their fright flicks.

I also really liked the film’s look and atmosphere, for the most part, and totally dug the idea of the monster, even if the actual execution was a little too vague and anonymous for my taste: I found myself thinking about it for some time after, trying to fill in the missing pieces. This, of course, is pretty high praise for any film, least of all a low-budget horror film: if I find myself thinking about any of it afterwards, that’s always a big plus, in my book.

There’s no doubt that Conor McMahon is one seriously talented dude: irregardless of its numerous issues, From the Dark is still vastly superior to many similar films. It’s also great to see that he’s not a one-trick-pony: anyone who can create something as giddy and uproarious as Stitches, yet follow it up with something as serious and glum as From the Dark seems poised to avoid pigeon-holing at all costs. At the end of the day, however, I’m nothing if not a greedy bastard: for that reason, I’m gonna be holding out for another Stitches. Serious or funny…flip a coin. As long as McMahon’s next film displays the same delirious level of invention and imagination as his killer clown opus, I’ll be that proverbial kid in that proverbial candy store.

Despite what rom-coms, TV commercials and the greeting card industry might say, true love is actually a pretty ugly business. Once the initial pie-in-the-sky phase of any relationship is over, couples actually have to get down to the nitty-gritty of living with each other, warts and all. We all have aspects of our personalities that we shield from the world at large (call ’em “dark sides” but do it with a sinister glare, for effect), aspects which our significant others tend to get the brunt of, for better or worse. When everyone else has gone home, when the TV is silent and the phones are off, when there’s nothing between you and another human being but the skin you were born with and the neuroses you picked up along the way…well…that’s amore, my friends.

The trick in any new relationship, of course, is to try to see through the cotton candy and unicorns into whatever “monsters” might be lurking in the background: we’re all damaged goods, to one degree or another, but the amount of damage varies from individual to individual. Accepting our partners at their absolute worst, just as we accept them at their absolute best, is one of the key tenets of being in love: you can like people, lust after them, respect the hell out of them or any combination of the three. You can’t truly love someone, however, unless you’re willing to also love their dark side, as well.

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s Spring (2014) is about this duality of romance, in ways both symbolic and much more explicit. At its core, the film is about the stirrings of new romance, the courtship and subtle dance that unites two complete strangers via their commingled heartstrings. It’s about the feelings (and thoughts) that rush to one’s cerebellum after the blood has finished rushing to points south, the questions and concerns that extend beyond “What now?” into “What next?.” Spring is about the eternal need for companionship, the primeval drive to continue the bloodline and find a sympathetic audience for our own endless tics, quirks and delusions. It’s about what happens when the person you love displays monstrous qualities…when they might be, in fact, a literal monster. Does love really conquer all or are our individual biologies really the unmitigated masters of our destinies?

When we first meet him, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) is in a bit of what might best be described as a complete and total tailspin into oblivion. His beloved mother has just died after a long, drawn-out illness, he’s relentlessly angry and the world at large is just one big fight waiting to happen. While drowning his sorrows with his buddy, Tommy (fellow indie writer-director Jeremy Gardner), in the same dive bar where he works, Evan gets picked on by a meat-headed moron who’s looking to tussle. Evan cleans his clock righteously (for a small guy, he fights like a wolverine) and gets fired, on the spot, for his trouble. He also ends up in the crosshairs of the vengeance-seeking jerk and his buddies, as well as the local cops: weighing his options, Evan decides to bid a not-so-fond farewell to the U.S. of A and hightail it for the beauty and grandeur of Italy.

As the American ex-pat triapses about his newly adopted homeland, he meets a couple of assholish backpackers (Nick Nevern and Jonathan Silvestri), as well as a kind-hearted old farmer, Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti), who sets Evan up with honest, hard work, as well as room and board. Just when it seems that Evan might, successfully, slip into anonymity, he lays eyes on the alluring Louise (Nadia Hilker). The rest, as they might say, could be history.

Louise is an intriguing character: a smart, droll student studying evolutionary genetics who also happens to be a vegetarian (although she admits to “craving meat” occasionally), Louise speaks several languages, raises the rabbits that she rescues from medical trials as her pets and seems but one quirky Vespa away from your standard “manic pixie girl” in a rom-com meet-cute. As mentioned previously, however, Louise has a dark side that she keeps carefully hidden from the world at large: she’s constantly injecting herself with mysterious fluids, like some sort of cyberpunk drug addict, refuses to see Evan after dark and has a tendency to turn into a slimy, reptilian, Cthulhian monster, from time to time. In other words: pretty much your usual relationship baggage.

As Evan continues to fall madly in love with Louise, she struggles with telling him too much about her own, unique genetic background: it’s hard enough not farting around your loved one…try not turning into a monster and see how it goes! For his part, Evan discovers one of Louise’s discarded needles and makes the natural assumption (no, not the monster one, silly) that his dream girl might have one foot firmly in nightmare territory. “I need to know if you’re the kind of crazy I can handle,” Evan says, at one point, a slightly goofy grin on his face. Suffice to say, Evan will have his answer before too long…whether he likes it or not.

Writer-director team Moorhead and Benson first hit my radar thanks to their astounding debut, the impossibly clever, thought-provoking and radical Resolution (2012), a film that manages to completely upend conventional notions of horror by getting all meta with the very basics of story/narrative construction. Resolution was a helluva film, by any definition, and my level of anticipation was through the roof for their full-length follow-up (their V/H/S Viral (2014) segment was tasty but not much more than an appetizer). While Spring is nowhere near the achievement that Resolution was (to be honest, few modern films are), it nonetheless finds Moorhead and Benson polishing up their craft, moving ever farther afield from the ultra lo-fi approach of their debut.

As far as mysteries go, the secret of Louise’s dual nature is pretty much dead on arrival: between the various posters, one-sheets, trailers and synopses floating around, I find it hard to believe that any semi-aware audience member would find this to be surprising in the slightest. This, of course, is never the film’s intent: Spring is much more interested in Evan and Louise’s tangled romance than it is in pulling another tired “twist” on the audience. Moorhead and Benson spill the beans approximately a third of the way into the film, leaving the remaining two-thirds as fall-out, as it were. This isn’t a film about a man who ends up falling in love with a woman who’s revealed to be part monster: it’s a film about a man who falls in love with a woman who just so happens to be part monster…it’s a subtle difference but a major one and it forms the crux for everything we see.

No romance works unless we buy into the lovers, however, which is one reason that Spring has no problem pulling off its particular hat-trick: not only are Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker completely comfortable in their roles, the pair have genuine romantic chemistry…we actually believe that they do (or could, as it were) love each other, which makes it a lot easier to empathize with everything else that happens. One of my primary concerns with “meet-cutes” is that they often feel so forced: we’re told that Quirky Girl A and Square Dude B are perfect for each other because the story requires it. Spring overcomes this obstacle by making the “falling in love” portion of the film feel like something out of a Linklater opus. There’s a genuine sense of tragedy to the proceedings because we see what a great couple Evan and Louise might be under any circumstances other than the ones they’re given.

While Pucci (who also featured prominently in the recent Evil Dead (2014) remake, as well as Richard Kelly’s nutty Southland Tales (2006)) walks a fairly predictable route as Evan, Hilker does much more interesting things with her performance as Louise. Despite this being the German actress’ first big-screen role, she absolutely owns every inch of the frame: the character of Louise is an intoxicating combination of eldritch biology, innate urges, human femininity and misplaced mothering instincts, a combination which Hilker handles with aplomb. One of the film’s biggest coups is that Louise is such a sympathetic creation: by keeping our empathy high, Moorhead and Benson allow us to slowly become as enrapt with her as Evan is.

While the filmmaking duo gets nice supporting work from a good cast (although I can’t help but wish Gardner had much more screen time than he does), this is Evan and Louise’s movie, through and through, meaning that it’s also Pucci and Hilker’s film, through and through. In many ways, it’s not a radical departure from what Leigh Janiak did in the recent Honeymoon (2014) (or even what Andrezj Zulawski did much earlier in Possession (1981)), but Moorhead and Benson’s star-crossed lovers are much more sympathetic than either Janiak or Zulawski’s protagonists. When we’re going to be spending nearly two hours with a couple of young lovers, they damn well better be interesting and Evan and Louise are anything but dull.

From a production standpoint, Spring looks gorgeous, certainly much more so than its predecessor (which was much more of a found-footage film). Aaron Moorhead’s cinematography (he also edited and produced the film, along with Benson) makes terrific use of some truly beautiful Italian scenery, taking us into picturesque old towns, lovely grottos and lush countryside in ways that split the difference between travelogue and old-world mystery. One of the most eye-popping aspects of Spring’s camerawork is the numerous crane and helicopter shots that pop up throughout: aside from giving a thoroughly awe-inspiring view of the surroundings, the cinematography also instills a proper sense of scope and scale to the narrative. When set against the backdrop of such ancient beauty and serene nature, the body-horror aspect of Spring becomes even more pronounced and grotesque, a streak of brain matter on an otherwise pristine wall.

Despite how well made Spring is, however, I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed by the whole thing. While Moorhead and Benson handle this occasionally musty material with plenty of energy and wit, there’s almost no comparison to the unhinged brilliance of Resolution. In many ways, Resolution was much closer to the mind-fuck cinema of Nacho Vigalondo or even Darren Aronofsky: there was a genuine sense that absolutely anything could happen and any easy sense of narrative continuity or logic was effectively thrown from the penthouse window. Resolution was an inherently tricky film but it wasn’t a gimmicky film: rather, it used the conventions of narrative filmmaking (and even narration, itself) to make particularly incisive comments on the ways humans create.

For its part, Spring is a much more straight-forward, streamlined film: in many ways, this is just your typical indie love story, albeit one with a foot firmly set in H.R. Giger’s nocturnal dream-world. While the film is undeniable well made and entertaining, I kept expecting it to develop into something trickier and deeper, developments which never really happened. Aside from an atypically sunny ending (all things considered), there are very few genuine surprises to be found here, although there’s also a decided lack of tone-deaf or eye-rolling moments, either. If anything, Spring feels like a way for Moorhead and Benson to announce themselves to the world at large, an employment ad, if you will: “Available for thought-provoking puzzlers, multiplex popcorn fare or any combination of the two.”

Even though Spring is a solid step-down from Resolution, it’s still one of the more evocative, atmospheric and interesting films of the year: if Moorhead and Benson can just find a way to effortlessly meld the aesthetics of their two full-lengths (the anything-goes intellectual swirl of Resolution with the top-notch production values of Spring), I have a feeling that they’ll be virtually unstoppable.

As I stare forty years of living in the face, there are precious few holdovers from my childhood but there are still a few: I’m still terrified of spiders, I’m still fascinated by outer space and I still believe in monsters. Call it a life-long delusion, a long-held conviction or just plain bull-headedness but I staunchly refuse to believe that we puny humans really know all there is to know about this massive ball of rock and water that we live on (much less the billions of unexplored ones that blanket the cosmos). The oceans are mighty deep, the jungles are mighty thick and there are plenty of dark places to poke around in…if you think about it, we know as much about our world as any child does, which is, of course, not much.

Indie horror auteur Adam Green also believes in monsters and, like me, isn’t afraid to admit it. The difference, of course, is that this stuff is his bread-and-butter: as the head of ArieScope Pictures, creator of the Hatchet franchise (2006-2013) and horror-oriented TV show Holliston, as well as writer-director of the ‘stuck-on-a-ski-lift’ chiller Frozen (2010) and a segment in the rather odious Chillerama (2011) anthology, Green is one of the brightest stars in the modern horror constellation. With his newest film, Digging Up the Marrow (2014), Green fuses his life-long love of monsters and horror to a sturdy found-footage template and comes up with something along the lines of a low-key, indie, found-footage Nightbreed (1990). In the process, he illustrates the fact that true believers have known all along: monsters are real…and they don’t always have our best interests in mind.

Structurally, Digging Up the Marrow is similar to another indie horror film: writer-director J.T. Petty’s S&man (2006). Like S&man, Green’s film begins as a mockumentary, with the writer-director going around various fan conventions and interviewing genre luminaries like Lloyd Kaufman, Tony Todd, Mick Garris and the like. On the surface, the subject is monsters but the early part of the film is actually all about Green and his film company, ArieScope Pictures. In an exceptionally clever bit of cross-promotion, Green and his associates play themselves in the picture and we get plenty of behind-the-scenes peeks into films like Hatchet (2006): it works within the structure of the film but it also serves as a neat little bit of fan service, a two-for-one that speaks volumes to the way Green approaches the subject (and his films, in general).

As Green discusses the various monster-related things that fans and peers send him, all while accompanied by erstwhile cameraman Will Barratt, we finally get to the “fiction” at the heart of the “fact.” In the midst of all the documentary footage and interviews, Green discusses one particular person, William Dekker (Ray Wise), who claims to have actual evidence of real monsters. Dropping everything, Green and Barratt head out to go see Dekker and prove (or disprove) his claims. Once there, the filmmaking duo find their host to be an exceedingly eccentric individual: intense, no-nonsense and utterly convinced of the existence of monsters, Dekker claims to know where the entrance to their underground world is. Dubbed “The Marrow,” Dekker claims that monsters regularly emerge from the otherwise unexceptional hole in the nearby forest and he gives Green the opportunity he’s waited his whole life for: the chance to actually see a real monster.

As Adam and Will settle in, however, they begin to get the gradual impression that Dekker isn’t playing with a full deck, especially when he claims to see monsters that neither of them can. When Green unexpectedly gets his wish and actually sees something, however, it sets off a fire in him: despite Dekker’s increasingly frantic pleas to leave well enough alone, he’s bound and determined to descend into The Marrow, scratching that unscratchable childhood itch for the first time. Will Adam and Will find the monsters that they seek? Is Dekker telling the truth, completely insane or some combo of the two? And where, exactly, does that ominous hole really lead?

Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way up front: Digging the Marrow suffers from many of the same issues that most found-footage films do (at this point, these issues are starting to seem like inherent genetic defects in the sub-genre), the finale is a little rough and we don’t get to see quite as much of the monsters as I’d like (pretty much a standard complaint in most horror fare, if you think about it). As with pretty much any found-footage film, the movie also ends just as it’s really kicking into gear: again, pretty much endemic of the sub-genre.

And that’s pretty much it, folks: past those few small complaints, Green’s film is a complete joy, a fan love letter to monsters that manages to push pretty much ever necessary button in my black, little heart. While I’ve been a fan of Green’s since Hatchet, I was unaware of how genuinely charismatic the guy is: it’s always a danger when directors “play themselves,” as it were, but Green manages to be friendly, likable, interesting and, most importantly, absolutely believeable during the fictional portions of the film. It shouldn’t be surprising that Green can interact effortlessly with the other directors and industry folks at the conventions (those are his peers, after all) but his acting scenes with Wise have just as much authenticity and realism. Ditto Barratt, who proves a more than capable foil to Green. In a subgenre that often suffers from unrealistic, unlikable actors/characters, Digging Up the Marrow acquits itself most ably.

This, of course, doesn’t even take into account the stellar contributions of long-time genre great Ray Wise. Always dependable and usually the best thing on any screen at any given time, Wise is one of those actors that lights up any production: to be honest, his part in Chillerama was just about the only thing I enjoyed in that entire film and it probably accounted for a grand total of five minutes, tops. Here, Wise has never been better, for one important reason: Green actually gives him the opportunity to stretch out and sink his teeth into a meatier role. We get much more of Wise, here, than we usually do (maybe since Swamp Thing (1982), to be honest) and the results are predictable: more Wise equals more badassitude, period. He’s tough, snarky, sarcastic, caustic, funny, vulnerable, sinister, innocent and all-around amazing: it’s a full-rounded performance and a multi-dimensional character. More than anything, this should serve as a wake up call for other filmmakers: stop using Wise as seasoning and start making him the main course…there’s no reason this guy shouldn’t be carrying more movies.

Any film about monsters, however, must still answer one very important question: how cool are the monsters? In the case of Digging Up the Marrow, the answer is “Very cool.” Based on the artwork of outsider illustrator Alex Pardee (who also appears during the film’s faux-interview portion), the monsters are unique, frightening, weird, cool and all-around unforgettable. My big complaint, of course, is that we never see as much (or as many) of them as we should but that’s also like complaining that free ice cream isn’t your favorite flavor: are we really going to bitch about free ice cream? What we do see, however, makes all the difference in the world: it’s obvious that Green and crew have genuine love for their subject and it really comes out in the exceptional practical effects and creature designs.

One of the biggest compliments I can give Digging Up the Marrow is that I wanted more as soon as the film was over: the film is ready-made for a sequel (The Marrow has many entrances, according to Dekker, all over the world…including in an IHOP, since monsters like pancakes) and I say “Bring it on.” Digging Up the Marrow is a fascinating, unique and extremely personal film by a massively talented filmmaker: I have a feeling that Green still has a lot to say about the subject and I can’t wait for him to say it.

While monsters always function better in the darkness, Adam Green is one of the few filmmakers to successfully grab them and haul them into the light. As a lifelong monster hunter, I tip my camouflaged hat.

What is the true meaning of Halloween? I don’t mean the historical origins, mind you: we could sit and debate pagan ceremonies, harvest festivals, etc…til the cows come home and still not get any closer to the actual answer. As we should all know by now, holidays have a way of shedding their original meanings over time, of morphing into decidedly different entities than they once were. Just as the concept of Christmas has, over time, become more secular/commercial and increasingly divorced from its religious origins, so, too, has the concept of Halloween lost much of its pagan origins and become something much more universal.

But none of this answers the original question: what, exactly, is the true meaning of Halloween? If I may be so bold, I think that I have the answer. Halloween is ghosts and curses, trick or treating and costumes. It’s parties, pranks, candy, the color orange and the long, slow death of Fall. Halloween is the one time of the year where everyone in the world, horror fans and neophytes alike, relish every possible opportunity to scare themselves senseless. Halloween is about ancient traditions, scary movies and jack-o’-lanterns. It’s about becoming someone/thing other than what you are, if only for a night. Halloween is all about having fun…but it’s also about the realization that death is only ever a stone’s throw away, hiding off in the shadows to pounce on the unwary. What is Halloween? Halloween is writer-director Michael Dougherty’s flawless Trick ‘r Treat (2007), a film that manages to encompass everything great and terrible about the holiday into one neat little package. Think of Trick ‘r Treat as the equivalent to A Christmas Story (1983), one of those films that just sums up a time of year so perfectly that you can’t imagine celebrating without it.

Structurally, Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film, albeit one more like Pulp Fiction (1994) than Creepshow (1982): rather than feature several separate stories, one after the other, all of the tales in Trick ‘r Treat are interwoven together. Characters from one story appear in the periphery of other segments: incidents seen from one angle are given a 360-view once we’re privy to all the details. The effect, quite frankly, is stunning: Dougherty creates such a unified vision that Trick ‘r Treat ends up being one of the most three-dimensional horror films ever…we really get to know the characters involved because we see so many different facets of them. The one constant that unites it all? The ever-present specter of Halloween and the diminutive, instantly classic presence of Sam, one of the greatest modern horror creations in recent memory.

Sam, clad in what appears to be a scarecrow’s garb, complete with burlap-sack mask, flits into and out of each of the film’s various stories. The stories themselves, ranging from a young woman’s (Anna Paquin) sexual awakening to the tragic story of a school bus full of drowned children, are familiar but are all given unique twists and turns courtesy of Dougherty’s exceptional script. Sam, the very embodiment of the holiday, serves a variety of roles throughout the film: avenging angel, detached observer, gleeful participant, mischievous prankster, cold-blooded killer. We never know quite when or where he’ll pop up next but pop up, he always does, ready with a rakish tilt of the head and that terrifying lollipop-knife of his.

I mentioned earlier that Trick ‘r Treat is a flawless film and I stand by that bold admission: there’s absolutely nothing about the film that ever takes me out of it for even a moment and each viewing ends with the desire to start the whole thing over. The acting…the filmmaking…the script…even the opening credits, styled like an old EC Comic, ala Creepshow…are all absolutely perfect. It’s quite handily become one of my favorite films and is one of the few movies that I can unequivocally recommend to anyone, regardless of individual tastes: if you like movies, you will like Trick ‘r Treat…I guarantee it, as Justin Wilson used to say.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Trick ‘r Treat is absolutely gorgeous and brilliantly made: the production design and art direction (by Mark Freeborn and Tony Wohlgemuth) are simply stunning, especially in eye-popping scenes like the yard full of jack-o’-lanterns or the ridiculously creepy scene where the kids find the half-submerged school bus. Glen MacPherson’s cinematography is nothing less than beautiful, giving the film a feel that’s pitched halfway between Wes Anderson and Sam Raimi. Truth be told, Trick ‘r Treat’s entire mis en scene reminds me of Anderson’s work (or, perhaps, even the work of legendary filmmaker Peter Greenaway): every scene and shot is so immaculately composed that it almost feels as if one has stepped into a perfect, miniature diorama.

Ultimately, there’s not a whole lot more for me to say about the film: I love it unconditionally and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Prior to seeing Trick ‘r Treat (which was inexplicably dumped straight-to-DVD after being delayed for years), I had always considered Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1974) to be the perfect representation of the season. There’s so much care and craft in Dougherty’s feature-debut, however, such a complete and genuine love for all things Halloween, that it’s impossible not to see Trick ‘r Treat as the ultimate Halloween film, bar none.

What is Halloween? Quite simply, Halloween is Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat: all hail the Pumpkin King and long may He reign!

I’ve always enjoyed animated films but there came a point when I kind of gave up on the modern crop of “kids’ movies,” probably around the time that Shrek (2001) became such a huge hit. While I’ve never been a big fan of the movie’s animation style, I was even less impressed with the nearly nonstop pop-culture references that seemed to function as jokes. Similar to things like the Scary Movie series, Shrek and its sequels seemed to go down a kind of rabbit-hole of irrelevance: when every joke is about something “hot and current,” the whole film will be hopelessly dated within a week. Since Shrek was so successful, this “pop-culture-scattergun” approach seemed to become the norm and I resigned myself to cherry-picking the individual films that seemed to appeal more to my sensibilities.

Lately, however, there seems to be a bit of a renaissance in more “traditional” animated films, movies that still appeal to kids with their positive themes, goofy sense of humor and bright color palettes, yet are composed of more than just mindless references to current films or cultural trends. In particular, the last five years have shown a real explosion in these types of animated films: Coraline (2009), The Secret of Kells (2009), 9 (2009), A Town Called Panic (2009), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), A Cat in Paris (2010), Chico and Rita (2010), A Monster in Paris (2011), Rango (2011), ParaNorman (2012), and The Croods (2013) were not only great, “old-fashioned” animated films but some of my favorite films of their respective years. To this list I can now add Jimmy Hayward’s Free Birds (2013), a rambunctious, intelligent and big-hearted treatise on thinking for yourself, working hard and being your own bird.

“Turkeys are so dumb, they think the farmer is their friend.” So begins Free Birds and so we get our first introduction to our hero, Reggie the Turkey (Owen Wilson). Reggie is a smart, introspective turkey who’s continually dismayed by his fellow turkeys’ lazy, lunk-headed behavior. He’s pretty sure that the farmer is fattening them up for dinner and he’s right: as the bearer of bad news, the group tosses him outside to serve as “representative”/sacrificial goat. As often happens in these kinds of films, however, this is not Reggie’s time to go into that good goodnight: turns out his farm has been chosen by the President of the United States as the site of the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning. When the POTUS’s daughter falls in love with Reggie, he gets whisked from the barnyard into the life of Riley: comfy bathrobes, all the free pizza he can eat and all the telenovellas he can wrap his peepers around.

Nothing good lasts forever, of course, and Reggie’s luck runs out when he’s suddenly abducted by a strange turkey named Jake (Woody Harrelson). Jake has a plan: he wants to travel back in time, to the first Thanksgiving, and find a way to take turkey off the menu. Turns out he has a time-machine, by the name of S.T.E.V.E. (voiced by the legendary George Takei), and just needs a partner: whether he wants it or not, Reggie is tagged in and the way-back machine is set to Plymouth Rock.

Once there, Reggie and Jake run smack-dab into a big ‘ol conflict: turns out that the turkeys, led by Jenny (Amy Poehler) and Ranger (writer/director Jimmy Hayward), are currently in pitched battle with the Pilgrim settlers, led by the dastardly Myles Standish (Colm Meaney). Jumping into the fray, Reggie and Jake do what they can to help their turkey ancestors but complications keep arising, namely that Reggie has gotten googly eyes for Jenny. To add to their problems, Chief Broadbeak (Keith David), the turkeys’ wise and venerable leader, is a pacifist and won’t let his group take up arms against the murderous settlers. What’s a turkey to do? If you’re Reggie, Jake and Jenny: plenty, that’s what. Will the turkeys emerge victorious, standing as peers beside the humans rather than food on their plates? Will Reggie ever find the peace and solitude that he (thinks) he’s looking for? Will Jake ever take two minutes to think before he does something? Will there be any unnecessary pop culture references? (Spoiler: just one, as the ever-patient Native Americans remark that the turkeys seem like…”angry birds”…ugh)

From start to finish, Free Birds is a ton of fun. It’s a fast-paced, intelligent and, quite frankly, extremely funny film that relies on characterization and actually humorous situations to make its point. One of the best examples of this has to be the TV shows/commercials that Reggie watches early on. While the pizza commercial is deliriously good (for some reason, it almost reminded me of a Troma take on a pizza commercial), the telenovella is pure gold. For much of the film, Reggie considers himself to be an outsider, a “lone wolf,” as it were. As such, he identifies wholeheartedly with the telenovella’s cool, tough-guy lead, even though he bears not one white of resemblance to Reggie. It’s how he sees himself, however, which is all that matters. More importantly, it’s a great, smart bit of character development that also manages to be goofy good fun: talk about killing two birds with one stone.

Not only is the film genuinely funny, but it’s also got equal measures of big heart and wide-eyed wonder. While Takei is absolutely fantastic as S.T.E.V.E., the time-travel sequences, themselves, are a sight to behold, reminding me (no lie) of the interstellar travel scene in 2001 (1968). There was a genuine sense of wonder, something that I felt not only through the characters but through myself, as well. I may be an avowed outer space fanatic, granted, but I find it hard to believe that “normal” viewers wouldn’t be just as impressed.

Voice-wise, Free Birds is locked-down tighter than Fort Knox. Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson are dependably good, as expected (although I wish that Woody was a bit more over-the-top, which is kind of what I expected, going in), but Amy Poehler is the real heart and soul of the production. Her Jenny is such a delightful, wonderful, cheerful, smart and strong character that I wonder why we don’t see her type in actual live-action films. Regardless, Poehler is marvelous: I dare any (sane) viewer to not fall in love with Jenny by the credit roll.

Even though Free Birds is very much a big, glossy, computer-animated production, I really enjoyed the look, finding it to be both surprisingly warm and delightfully detailed: there’s always something going on in the margins of the frame, giving the film a bustling, “alive” quality. While I’ve yet to see writer/director Hayward’s version of Horton Hears a Who (2008), I have seen his version of Jonah Hex (2010): while I wasn’t blown away, finding it to be fairly close to the forgettable Van Helsing (2004), it was still a bit better than other films of its ilk. Not much, mind you, but a bit. After being so impressed by Free Birds, I’ll definitely need to give Horton a shot, although I’ll probably stop short of re-examining Jonah Hex: some things are probably best left buried.

If you’ve got kids, or are just young at heart, you could do a whole lot worse than Free Birds. While the film is occasionally silly (the coda is particularly eye-rolling), it also packs moments of actual emotional heft, such as the dramatic scene where Standish’s men set the turkey tree on fire. The performances are energetic and fun, the themes are smart and timely and the whole thing ends with Social Distortion’s cover of CCR’s “Up Around the Bend” playing over the end credits: it’s almost like they looked right into my head.